Conversing Over the Divide: Perspectives on Migration and Culture

Meeting the Participants

Steve, 64, Canvey Island

Profession: Retired underwriter

Voting record: Usually Tory, except when he lived in “the socialist republic of south Hackney” and supported the SDP

Amuse bouche: His focus in underwriting was kidnap and ransom: People often claim that insurance is dull, but it’s far from it when you’re discussing evacuating people from South Korea because the North Koreans have activated the weapon systems”

Evie, twenty-five, London

Occupation: Psychology graduate

Voting record: In her native land, Aotearoa, she supported both Labour and Green

Amuse bouche: Eva has been employed as a singer on ocean liners; her most extended voyage was half a year, which is a significant duration to be at sea

For starters

Eva: Steve seemed there to have a nice time, to be receptive

He: She came across as a very intelligent, articulate, nice person

She: I had a caprese salad, pasta with fungi, and a rich sweet treat, it was very good

Key disagreement

She: He was definitely on the side of immigration being reduced. He believes that UK residents who are native to the area, not just Caucasian Britons, face limited access to the things that they need, because increasing numbers are arriving. Whereas I just don’t think the figures are so problematic

He: I’m for qualified migrants, I don’t want to live in a homogeneous, WASP country with warm beer. But I maintain that governments have used immigration to occupy positions they struggle to staff without raising wages. Pay are suppressed, so levies have to be minimized, so we can’t do things better – spend more money on childcare, on education, on innovation

Eva: I don’t have that much knowledge of the EU referendum, because I was 16 and not living here when it happened. He explained it to me in a different perspective. He informed me about “posted workers” – people could arrive in the UK and only be paid the wage of the their nation of origin

Steve: The French president spent two years getting the EU to abolish the system; it was reformed in 2018. Previously, posted workers coming in were undermining British workers. Under the former PM, it was petroleum staff that were imported; later it’s been hospitality, farms. She grasped that, because she’d worked on a cruise ship and said she was paid a lot more than international colleagues

Common ground

He: It would be great to have a alternative power, come off of oil. I don’t like pollution, I love the clean air, I appreciate rural areas. We agreed on a lot of that. But I said, “What do you think of the Scandinavian nation?” Their energy revenues soared after the conflict began, they used that money to build green infrastructure

Eva: So we’re dependent on their petroleum. You can see that’s not a good way to go about things. He was supportive of maintaining domestic drilling for the small amount we’ll require in the coming years. I partially concur with him. We’re still going to use planes. We both think we should be advancing to greener solutions, windfarms and hydro

Dessert topics

Eva: We touched on Islamophobia, though we avoided labeling it. He seemed worried by extremism coming here – he did mention that a many individuals in the Arab world were extremist, which I felt was not accurate. I think it’s prejudiced to make judgments based on faith

He: I come from the East End. I asked her if she’d been to Whitechapel, and she said it had been gentrified. Obviously, I would say that: populated by professionals. But when I go down Chrisp Street market, I appear out of place. People stare at me because it’s become very Muslim. She had a little look at me about that. I used the word “ghetto”. Eva’s got Polish-Jewish ancestry – she doesn’t like that word, to her it denotes poverty. I said, “No, it’s an area that becomes theirs.” I agreed to use a alternative term – maybe community?

She: I feel like Muslim people are really overrepresented in the media as doing things wrong. It appears a little bit discriminatory, or xenophobic

Takeaway

Steve: I think we separated amicably. We had a hug at the train stop

Eva: We both said that we’d had a wonderful evening